Lucian Freud Slipped Away

The passing of Lucian Freud last week startled me out of my 6 week long blog nap. When I first saw Freud’s work at the Met’s retrospective in 1994 I was blown away, and I’ve stayed blown away ever since. His portraits and depictions of the human body are just unbelievably brilliant and inspiring. Here are some of his master pieces and some good words of wisdom for the common portraitist.

“I think of truthfulness as revealing and intrusive, rather than rhyming and soothing.”

“You are very conscious of the air going round people in different ways, to do with their particular vitality.”

“I’m really interested in people as animals. Part of liking to work from the naked is for that reason.”

“I work from the people that interest me and that I care about, in rooms that I live in and know.”

“Art has always to do with sensuality and selfishness.”

By the way, the first image of this post, the back view of Freud’s frequent model Leigh Bowery can be seen in the Metropolitan Museum and is well worth a visit.